FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
1 1 
distant lands to look at it, and wonder at the skill of the 
old builders ; and the city guides tell them curious, untrue 
tales of the people who once lived in it. One of the guides, 
a M'Kay — an old, bent man, with a long, white beard — 
interests me more than the others, he takes such a kind, 
paternal interest in each of the tourists he brings to see 
the place, and his grand, proprietorial air makes one think 
the hous^ belongs to him. Whenever I hear the familiar 
click of his stick coming into the small court I listen with 
all my ears. First he tirls the pin on the oak door, and 
insists on his charges doing the same ; then he points out 
the very spot where the bailie breathed his last, and tells 
how the old worthy entertained Bonnie Prince Charlie 
and Queen Mary at right royal entertainments. 'Ye '11 
hae heard tell o' Mary Queen o' Scots/ he says, £ her as 
was beheided by Queen 'Liz'beth?' 4 Ou ay, we ken a' 
aboot the jade,' say the country cousins ; and 4 1 guess so/ 
say the Murricans : # they have, in all probability, just bought 
a pretty picture of her in Princes Street, and ' it is vury like, 
indeed.' American tourists buy thousands of these photos, 
always from the picture which represents Queen Mary a 
pretty, sentimental girl of twenty, in black velvet, with a 
ruff and prayer-book — and a block in the distance. They 
do not think the portraits of a middle-aged, broken queen 
are at all like. Then the old man unbends his back and 
points up with his stick to a plaster bust of Socrates that 
a man of unclassical tastes put out in a niche, because 
there was no place for it in his room. ' Yonder,' he says, 
( is the image o' Bailie M'Morran hi'sel' ; it 's said to be 
jist a wonerfu' guid likeness/ and the tourists look up 
